Dr. Orozco stepped out of the van and raised his hand to signal the car parked at the far end of the block. The tires burned rubber as the driver roared to the van. In five seconds, the disfigured young doctor was gone.
Gadgets broke the silence. "One brave hombre. That happens to him and he still plays the game."
"No," Lyons corrected. "He wasn't in any game. They just did it."
"Talk about gifts from God," Blancanales added. "Dr. Orozco and his people are a gift to us. I feel it about this guy. From the evidence on his face, I kinda trust his story."
"Unomundo's got to go." Gadgets eased down the hammer of his Beretta 93-R. He set the safety. He returned the autopistol to his shoulder holster. "Got ToGo."
"First, we got to find him," Lyons said as he reached into his war bag heavy with steel. He took out the re-engineered Colt Government Model. He checked the chamber and checked the Allen screw securing the suppressor. Redesigned and hand-machined by Andrzej Konzaki to incorporate the innovations of the Beretta autopistols, the interior mechanisms of the Colt no longer resembled what Browning had invented and patented. Like the Berettas, a fold-down lever and oversized trigger guard provided a positive two-hand grip. But it fired silent full-powered .45-caliber slugs, in semi-auto and three-shot bursts. Lyons jammed in an extended ten-shot magazine, with the chamber left empty. Returning the weapon to the flight bag, Lyons gave his partners a salute: He would go with Luis and they would follow him.
"Find and kill," he said.
A few steps took him to the waiting taxi. Inside, the sallow-faced young driver turned to him. Lyons extended his hand. "We're working together, Luis. We'll break those Nazis."
The driver smiled and shook the North American's hand.
Speeding to find Colonel Morales, the taxi traveled the brightly lit boulevard again. Lyons saw Luis glance to a crowd of laughing young men and women emerging from a restaurant. Then came a bride in flowing white and a young groom in a tuxedo. The crowd of friends showered the newlyweds with rice until they gained the shelter of the limousine.
Luis stared at the scene with longing and sorrow. For that moment, Lyons studied the young man's old face. Lyons had already heard Dr. Orozco's horror. What had Luis suffered?
Looking down through a dirty skylight, they saw Colonel Morales. The colonel supervised a crew of workers packing what appeared to be clay inside the door panels of three cars a battered Fiat, a gleaming black Mercedes, and a blue-and-white National Police squad car. Elsewhere in the warehouse, workers packed the clay into commonplace street objects: trash cans, striped street barricades, the underside of fiberglass park benches.
Blancanales leaned to Lyons and Luis. He pointed to a shipping crate, then motioned to all the objects the workers packed. "That's C-4. Plastic explosive."
"They are making bombs?" Luis asked.
Lyons nodded. He slipped back from the skylight to key his hand-radio. He whispered to Gadgets.
"Guess what? It's a bomb factory. Car bombs, booby traps. Enough to make this city Beirut-for-a-day. What's going on out front?"
"Nada, man. Zero. Guard number one's got a cigar in the car. Guard number two's asleep on his feet."
"The doctor's people in position?"
"First shot they hear, it's blacktop kill zone."
"Standby. Over."
Blancanales snapped his fingers to get Lyons's attention. He pointed down. "Two guards coming up," he hissed.
Lyons went to the stairwell housing, moving as quickly as he dared over the sun-cracked tar of the warehouse roof.
He felt the footsteps on the stairs before he heard them. Pressing his back against the housing, he thumbed back his silent Colt's hammer and waited.
Voices. Sentries. The door swung open, light fanning across the dark rooftop. Lyons saw one man with a folded-stock Galil autorifle in his hands. The man called out.
A second man looked around the corner, his eyes going wide as he looked straight into Lyons's face.
Grabbing the guy by the hair, Lyons jerked the sentry's face into the muzzle of the silent Colt, and pulled the trigger twice.
He tried to shove the dead man away, but stumbled over the corpse. Still he aimed one-handed at the other sentry, and fired.
The slug clanged off the Galil's barrel and tore through the man's right bicep. The guy sucked down a breath as the pain came, but the scream never left his throat, a second .45-caliber hollowpoint punching into his chest. The third went high, tearing away the top of his head.
Lyons changed magazines. On one knee he listened for an alarm. The roof door swung back and forth on its hinges, and voices came from below; a worker used a power drill. But he heard no shouting, no rush of feet on the stairs.
He looked over to Blancanales. His partner gave him a thumbs-up, then he and Luis crept across to join Lyons. They stripped the Galils from the dead men. They found 9mm automatics in shoulder holsters. Lyons nudged Luis.
"Put on that one's coat, and sling the rifle over your shoulder. Pol, you make like the other man. Down the stairs, left into the office. I want that phony colonel alive."
Descending the stairs, Luis and Blancanales screened Lyons with their bodies. They watched the floor of the warehouse. The workers continued in their preparation for the death and dismemberment of thousands of innocent people. Colonel Morales helped a worker press a sheet of C-4 into a wide flat box. Then another worker poured thousands of steel nuts and bolts over the plastic explosive to fill the box. They closed the box, and taped it tight to create a one-foot-by-two-foot Claymore mine.
The three invaders cut from the stairs to the door of the windowless office. Blancanales watched a worker pasting newspaper over the improvised Claymore. The bomb would be placed at a newsstand, to spray an intersection or an entire city block with crude but deadly shrapnel. Lyons, now in front of the "sentries," pushed open the door. He saw a young man leaning over a map of Guatemala City. The man spoke without looking up.
"Coronet. Aqui esta la otra..."
A silent .45 slug through the top of the head rocked him back. His arms flailed like a spastic marionette before he collapsed to the floor. Already dead, his last breath wheezed through blood in his throat.
Pointing to the telephone, Lyons whispered to Luis: "Can you get that phone to ring? Call somebody, get them to call you back?"
Luis nodded. He dialed the operator. "Senorita. Hay una problema con este telefono. Esposible."
Lyons and Blancanales watched the interior of the warehouse through cracks in the wood of the office wall. Beside them, the phone rang, once, twice, three times.
Finally, Colonel Morales looked toward the ringing telephone. He called out: "Armando! Armando!"
When the ringing continued, the colonel marched to the office.
Once inside, Blancanales pinned his arms. Lyons slapped a hand over his mouth and asked. "You want to live, Nazi? Want to live?"
Seeing Lyons's face, the colonel threw himself back, twisting and kicking. But Blancanales and Luis wrestled him to his knees. Lyons felt the colonel gasping against his palm as he put his knee into the middle-aged man's back to immobilize him. Making sure the guy had seen the silenced Colt, Lyons pressed the weapon to the back of the colonel's head.
"I want to hear you say you want to live. Say it."
"Traitor to your race!" the colonel grunted.
Lyons hooked his elbow around the colonel's throat and jerked his head back. He kicked his prisoner's knees apart from behind, and hissed: "You're a brave one, Nazi. You think you're a man because you torture and murder. But are you brave enough to learn a new word? The word is eunuch..."